TECH NEWS – No exaggeration: if Alphabet (Google’s parent company) is forced to divest its advertising business in the EU, it will have to give up four-fifths of its revenue there!

Regarding online advertising, Google and AdX are way ahead of the rest. Still, the company could get burned in the EU, as the EU has expressed concern that the tech company has violated antitrust laws and should be dismantling its advertising segment. (What’s up with significant companies growing too big? It’s the same reason Microsoft got an antitrust lawsuit from the US Federal Trade Commission, the FTC…)

In a lengthy post, the European Commission says that it has already informed Google of its “preliminary view” that it considers the company’s activities in the advertising business to be illegal. According to the EC, the search engine giant is promoting its products’ advertising, harming competition. They examined how Google handles AdX ads. DFP runs ad selection through AdX, while Google Ads and DV360 provide the buying tools for advertisers who advertise through AdX. The result of what seems like a simple process is that others don’t stand a chance.

According to the blog post, the behavioral change itself will not be sufficient: “The Commission preliminarily finds that, in this particular case, a behavioral remedy is likely to be ineffective to prevent the risk that Google continues such self-preferencing conducts or engages in new ones. With its publisher ad server and ad-buying tools, Google is active on both sides of the market and holds a dominant position on both ends. Furthermore, it operates the largest ad exchange. This leads to a situation of inherent conflicts of interest for Google. Therefore, the Commission’s preliminary view is that only the mandatory divestment by Google of part of its services would address its competition concerns.”

Of course, it remains to be seen whether this warning will come to anything…

Source:WCCFTech